Page 52 of Coal Hearts

I felt him before he pounced.

A buffet of power.

A cold kiss of claiming.

With violent arms, he swooped me off my sprinting feet and slammed me to the ground.

So hard.

Too hard.

My lungs stuck together. I gasped for nonexistent breath.

Henri prowled around me, panting fast, his hands buried in his hair. “Fuck. Fuck.” He stalked like a beast, cursed like a pirate, and with a quick look back the way we’d run, a savage decision carved into his face.

“They’re watching.” Slamming to his knees beside me, he wrenched my legs apart with unfightable hands, then pressed his entire body over mine. “They’re watching, and I’m not going to get any further unless I finish what I started.”

The soft grass cushioned me. His heat seared me. And air finally trickled into my lungs as he thrust his trouser-clad cock against my very vulnerable core.

His teeth latched against my throat, making me buck beneath him.

“No!” I shoved my palms against his concrete chest. “Get the hell off me!”

He grunted as his hips drove dangerously hard against me. “I told you what would happen if you fought me.”

My skirt floated far too high. My torn knickers were stolen and stuffed in his pocket. I was exposed and defenceless, weak and stupid.

“I’m sorry,” he grunted, shooting me back to the moment he’d been on the brink of raping me back at the club.

An apology in the midst of an assault.

A man who knew right from wrong but chose to be bad anyway.

It hurt.

It confused.

He hurt and confused.

Even as his hands pawed at my hips, my instincts gravitated toward him to save me instead of hurt me. To save me from...himself.

A part of me didn’t believe he would do this.

All while the truth slapped me in the face.

His weight proved it. His rutting hips forced me to accept that whatever undercurrents I felt from him, whatever secrets he hid couldn’t redeem him for being exactly what I feared.

“Stop it!” I yanked on his hair.

He groaned and dragged his hand up my ribcage. “Keep fighting and see what happens.”

“Don’t!”

His fingers clamped over my breast, cupping me entirely. I’d always been well endowed for my frame—courtesy of my whorish birth mother, I assumed—but Henri’s large palm swallowed every piece of my flesh.

He groaned and bit me again. “Merde, you feel so good. So fucking good.”

The tangled mess inside me chose that exact moment to let loose.